Consider the set back DADT posed to the Clinton Administration, and how it compromised health care reform.  I’m sure Rahmbo has. Despite an evolution on DADT in the public mind, moving the issue to the forefront will undermine Obama’s efforts to extend affordable health care to all Americans.

I submit that more gays are harmed by the lack of health insurance than by DADT.  And more gays are harmed by the global financial crisis than DADT.  These are broad American problems that are too important to allow distractions from any narrow activista interest group.

You can’t expect smart progressives to take up polarizing fights on issues effecting a small subset of Americans at the expense of possibly losing political wars of paramount national importance. Be patient.

Brian, it’s still early in the Obama presidency.  Don’t get angry yet.  There will be time to hold him accountable.  Timing is everything.   Imagine you’re a senior White House advisor.  When would you tell him to take up the issue if your interest was serving the American people and President Obama instead of just the LGBT community?  I’d like to see him take this issue up right after the 2010 election, preferably in a lame duck session.

With the money we are spending we could build coast to coast high speed railroads, develop a fleet of natural gas cars and trucks, hell we could build a tunnel to Brittan!  A new power transmission grid fed by new advanced nuclear reactors, all dangerous spent nuclear fuel should be safely buried a mile deep in solid bedrock below Nevada at Yucca Mountain.  We should be completely energy independent from the nuts in the Middle East.  Lets revitalize our steel industry.  A nation that doesn’t make its own steel is in decline.  Let’s measure this “great” administration’s success by how much they BUILD (lest Atlas shrugs and all the builders go away).   Crap, I’d settle for a fleet of Zeppelins!

The conservative New York Post published the above cartoon depicting police officers shooting a monkey dead and then implying that the monkey authored the stimulus bill. It is not a large logical leap to assume that the cartoon’s author used the monkey as a symbol of President Obama. The best we can say for the cartoon’s author is that he has revealed racial insensitivity and ignorance of American history. All of this reminds me of the Danish Muslim cartoon fiasco a few years ago. Brian Pierce and I wrestled each other in the Daily Illini on this issue. Why do cartoons have the ability provoke more ire than words?

This cartoon troubles me. I debated whether to post it on Urbanagora for fear of promoting it rather than deriding it. However, in all but a few instances I support free speech with vigor and rage, even when the speech offends millions of people. What we learn about the ignorance of the author can only be learned by allowing him to speak. The full breadth of an idiot’s idiocy can only be known if we allow him to speak. The cartoon’s audience also learns what offends people and why it offends them. We learn how to better distinguish between idiotic speech and valuable speech.

The New York Post’s Editor-in-Chief defended its cartoon and responded to Al Sharpton’s criticism of it:

The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.

Even if their intent was to parody “a current news event,” they must have been or should have been cognizant of the racial and assassination attempt implications of the cartoon. Artists often use symbols that have double meanings.

I consider myself to be progressive on social issues and international human rights issues, but free market oriented on economic issues. Brian and others have often called me a Democrat or a liberal. Others have called me a libertarian. No one wants to believe that I am a conservative. I am a conservative. Rupert Murdoch owns the New York Post, the publisher of the above cartoon. He is not a conservative. He is an idiot. I am going to take conservatism away from people who wear conservative robes but speak in racist tones. I tried this in another old Daily Illini article:

Conservatives are a diverse crowd, housing many shades. The ones most often in the news are the loud radicals who fanatically defend their political faiths without concept of compromise. I hope to offer a less newsworthy view on what a conservative is and is not.

I’m not moving. I’m not going to run to hide under a different political philosophy because of the Murdochs and the Limbaughs living with me. To them, I suggest you get out of my house. It is no longer yours. Young, socially progressive conservatives will march all over your antiquated, obese bodies.

It’s been widely reported that President Obama has ordered the sending 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. I support that decision, as long as it is made in the context of the strategy I just indicated (we’ll find out if that’s the case when we find out the results of the 60-day Af-Pak strategy review). It’s not at first glance clear how more troops are consistent with such a strategy – it might seem that more troops are necessary only if we’re pursuing a more ambitious strategy, and that a greater, more intrusive American presence is more likely to inflame Afghan popular opinion. That’s definitely the risk that comes with more troops, but this UN report is enough to persuade me that more troops is better than what we’re doing now.

The level of civilian deaths last year was at its highest since the war began. A small majority – 55% – of those deaths were caused by the Taliban, which is good news in the sense that it’s better than if we were causing the most civilian deaths there. But the trouble is that of the civilian deaths caused by us, 65% are a result of airstrikes. Airstrikes are an important tool, but if they’re going to result in large numbers of civilian deaths, they need to be avoided if possible. An increased ground presence will, presumably, at least partially alleviate the need for airstrikes. Our presence will be more pervasive, but the tradeoff is (hopefully) fewer civilian deaths, which is hugely beneficial to our goals there. It also, of course, puts American troops at greater risk, which is why if we’re going to fight this war at all, we need to have clear and realistic objectives so we’re not sending these troops into a quagmire. It’s not yet clear if that’s the case, but hopefully Obama or Gates gives us some indication sometime soon.

Right now, a lot of people are scared, and there are plenty of reasons why. The question is what this fear has motivated us to do and how certain people are using it to achieve their own ends.

The responses to these challenges have run the gamut. Some point to our new charismatic leader as the beginning of the “change we need.” Others suggest clinging to traditional political or economic philosophies, from Reagan to FDR, Friedman to Marx. Others claim that the differences are too great, and that the Union is no longer worth saving.

The measure of a nation is its ability to innovate. When a country stops creating it dies. This is not limited to commerce or science. It is a political and economic matter as well. History does not repeat, it varies on common themes and precludes common responses.

But the premises that some are adopting, of dissolution or blind allegiance described as “post partisanship,” is unwise. Our union is cantankerous and disagreeable. But it is through our disputes and our compromises that we find our strength. No side of the political spectrum is right all of the time, and it is through conflict that we avoid bipartisan mistakes.

It is with this in mind that we have to turn to the official beginning of the Obama administration; the stimulus bill. It is representative of the stalest type of thinking. Keynesian economic theory is nothing but a justification for the argument that if you can’t work your way out, buy your way out. Government spending to “beef up” GDP is nothing more than a cheap parlor trick to scam the masses, much like dishonest CEOs used accounting rules to bump up earnings. These would be the same CEOs that President Obama railed against as a candidate, and still vilifies today.

But even if I were a staunch Keynesian, this bill represents a type of political cowardice that makes its passage unpalatable. There are plenty of provisions within that are stimulus related. I have nothing against those provisions. Granted I would not necessarily vote for them, but those provisions belong in such a bill.

However there are other provisions which are included, not because of their potential to stimulate the economy, but because these programs will be easier to pass while hidden in a “needed bill.” Because time is limited, there will be less debate than would otherwise be generated if the provisions stood alone. One initiative I find especially repugnant deals with health care.

Contained within the stimulus bill is an initiative to create a unified electronic system for the transfer of medical records. While seemingly innocuous on its face, the bill makes participation mandatory with fines being assessed for those who refuse to join. The privacy concerns involved for those who do not want to participate are deemed irrelevant by the party that is supposedly privacy’s champion. Further, the initiative also creates the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, which will assess a doctor’s treatment to make sure it is “efficient and effective.” Essentially, it creates a Big Brother for doctors in determining how to treat people. It has all the worst traits of socialized medicine, without the benefits.

Instead of having the courage to separate these more controversial provisions from the stimulus, and permitting the debate that these proposals deserve, President Obama hides the ball and then calls those that would oppose him foolish and mean spirited for holding up needed aid to America’s most desperate citizens. I call that politics as usual.

President Obama ran on a promise that he would elevate public discourse, change how politics is done in Washington, and then challenged us to do what is hard and right as opposed to the expedient and insubstantial. This is a promise and a challenge that did not even last 30 days. Not only did President Obama fail to achieve these goals in his first major piece legislation, he took the opposite approach and revealed himself to be just another politician. Those that would throw on the brakes in an attempt to form a better bill, to point out these distinctions, are drowned out by those that are paralyzed by fear or by those that would capitalize on other’s fear. Either way, legislation that should at the very least be highly scrutinized is being fast tracked merely so people can believe that “something is being done.”

One president told us that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Our current president wants to use fear to achieve his own ends. By allowing President Obama to dictate the agenda by playing on our fears, we sacrifice any semblance of personal autonomy. President Obama should either stop lecturing about sacrifice, courage and innovative thinking or start living it. Either way, it is time for a change.

Editor’s Note: George Will came out with a column today playing with the Fear Itself quote, and talking about the stimulus package. I considered not posting this, but hell, I wrote it before Will posted his stuff, and I bring the cowardly comment, so screw it.

“Distaste” is perhaps too strong a word – it was almost more like amusement. At first there was a smattering of boos for Rick Warren, from Americans and non-Americans alike, which wasn’t particularly surprising given the controversy surrounding his selection. But then came this sentence in Obama’s speech:

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.

And, to my surprise, several students burst out laughing. It seemed the sort of sentiment this crowd would endorse, and of course it is. The laughter, I later learned, was provoked by how absurd they felt the statement was in the context of the rest of the Inauguration. For the day had begun with a Christian prayer from an Evangelical preacher, and only a few minutes earlier Obama himself had invoked “the words of Scripture.” And of course later the event was closed out with more prayer. And in the middle comes this ecumenical statement from Obama about our “patchwork heritage” in which the final words “and non-believers” are spoken in a tone mixing defensiveness with condescension. To the non-Americans in the audience, the prayers were unseemly and even shocking, and Obama’s words rang hollow.

It’s no secret on this blog that I don’t take the friendliest view of religious belief and that I’m a strong advocate of separation of church and state. But even I was taken aback by this reaction. Watching at home, I would have barely noted the Biblical quotations in Obama’s speech, and I would have marked the recognition of “non-believers” as progress – which, in the American context, it is.

It made me realize how ingrained religion – and Christianity in particular – is in American public life. It also made me realize a previously unnoticed cost of that intermingling: we look like fools.

I should note that I don’t wholeheartedly endorse their reaction. I think Obama’s invocation of scripture, for example, is at least partly a way for him to nod in the direction of the black civil rights heroes who came before him by emulating their rhetoric, which often carried religious overtones. But watching the invocation and benediction among a group of people who found it so utterly bizarre for them to be taking place at a political event made me realize that it is utterly bizarre. And it does undermine Obama’s statements of inclusiveness when they take place in the midst of such open displays of Christian piety.

There’s a sense in which this isn’t that big of a deal, and I recognize that. But it becomes at least a little bit bigger of a deal when it’s noted that it taints the message we try to send to the world – and based on the reaction of the people I’m hanging out with, it does so to a degree more significant than I would have thought.

2) Obama wont rush dont ask dont tell.  This will be pushed back out of the beginning of the agenda.  While Obama might be catching some hell from the gay community about dont ask dont tell, he’s way to smart to let this derail his first 100 days the way it derailed Clintons.  Too much political capital.

3) Stimulus will pass with broad bipartisan support, and many republicans will later regret their vote as they run low on popular ways to distinguish their record from Dems.

4) A few months stories will break about the ultimate policy pragmatist Rahm sparring with Congressional leaders about what to push when, he’ll be pushing to keep things centrist and post-partisan a while longer.

5) Michelle Obama will dazzle us all with her poise and grace.  By the end of 2009, she will have a higher approval rating than even the Barackstar.

6) Neither Cuomo nor Kennedy will be the next Senator from NY.

7) Dow will be above 10,000 by July, but will dip below 7,900 again before April.

8) Jaybandit and I are having a weight loss contest, I will win.

So the government is about to spend a gajillion dollars and the transition team is probably thinking up how to target the investments to get the most bang for the buck. Many have suggested using a chunk of it to help states or to fund proposed and planned infrastructure projects. Funding infrastructure projects has the benefit of putting large numbers of people directly to work in construction. Indirectly it will stimulate demand and create jobs in other sectors that supply materials as well as in service sectors as people spend the money they’re earning with their nifty construction jobs. 

 The biggest cause for concern in investing in existing planned projects is that we might be entrenching a problematic status quo or invest in scattered projects without an overarching vision that sets the tone for the future development of our country. If the portion of the package that is going towards infrastructure simply goes into repairing aging roads, maintaing bridges, and the odd new road project, it will do something to stimulate the economy, but it won’t change our trajectory. What we really need to do is rethink our infrastructure and use this money to launch our country into the next upswing. Eventually the economy will stop hemmoraging jobs and money and we’ll be out of the beta phase. The question is whether our recovery will be slow and our plateau lower or quicker and our eventual plateau higher. Essentially we have to ensure that this stimulus makes the country more competitive far into the future. If our investment stops at repair (we need the repair TOO) and small projects, we are just fixing our infrastructure so that we can compete in the 1970s, not the 2010s.

We need to invest with vision. A patchwork of uncoordinated projects won’t get us far, it’s got to be big, bold, and innovative. We need to invest in upgrading our roads, rail, universities, power grid, medical practices, and communications networks. A coordinated effort to upgrade our infrastructure would do all of these things in such a way that they work together seamlessly. We’re about to give America a $1 trillion makeover. Will the end result be Angelina Jolie or Michael Jackson?

Anyone who has driven in any of the more high traffic corridors of a major metro area can attest to the sorry state our roads are in. Traffic is backed up for miles at rush hour, potholes are common, and repairs are haphazard, unsightly, and always seem to be done at the worst times of the day. While we need to repair and improve our roads, we should also be careful that we do not increase access points too much otherwise the problems of today will be back within a decade as urban areas sprawl out to infinity with cheap houses made out of popsicle sticks and cardboard, “starter homes,” popping up in the exurban fringe. Roads are nifty and all, but they are part of our problem because part of why we are losing our competitive edge is that we can’t keep up with our infrastructure needs. It’s a hell of a lot harder to maintain hundreds of thousands of miles of road that is heavily trafficked than to maintain fewer roads with lighter traffic and mass transit systems. At a certain point the number of people using a transportation grid point is too low to pay for or justify creation and maintenance, but we seem to do it anyway, depriving more heavily trafficked areas of maintenance funds. New road projects should include innovative ideas like New York’s failed congestion pricing scheme that would have charged people to enter Manhattan below 60-somethingth street and put a portion of that money into mass transit projects. Other ideas floating around are converting HOV or Carpool lanes into sliding-scale toll roads where users would pay increased fees for using the lane at peak hours than off-peak hours with each additional X cars increasing the price of use.

Related to highways and roads is our use of cars. Yeah I know, open highways, house in the burbs, white picket fence, 2.3 kids, dog named spot. American dream. That particular American dream might just hold us back in the future. It made sense in the 50s, it seems to make sense in the 00s. As the price of fuel increases and as governments the world round consider attaching a cost to carbon emissions, the use of internal combustion engines will become increasingly expensive. Oh sure we’ll have new technology  that uses less carbon, is cheaper, etc, but I’m still waiting for California’s hydrogen highway to not look like a huge publicity stunt. As the economy recovers, basic materials will go right back to their pre-bust highs much faster than most would like and things like copper for wiring, rubber for tires and insulation, steel for construction, concrete, hell any raw material will go through the roof. The longer the distance between people, the more we’ll have to spend per capita for these things that undergird our infrastructure, and the more it will cost to maintain them. We don’t need to kill cars, just make it such that they are not a necessity in American life.

A logical offshoot of a decreased dependence on cars would be an increased reliance on rail. This runs the gamut from freight rail, to commuter rail, to subways. A really bold plan would fund projects like California’s bullet train from LA to San Francisco or a national bullet system linking major metropolitan areas that could compete with airlines as fuel becomes more expensive. On the freight rail front, we could really use more freight track because demand has outstripped supply for a number of years and the overload contributes to accidents and massive delays. On the commuter rail and subway/lightrail front, the government could fund proposed projects in a number of major metropolitan areas and, if combined with some form of congestion pricing or flexible tolls, could create infrastructure that is more self-sustaining costwise.

Our education system generally is in need of some serious improvements, but even more immediate is the need to change how we conceptualized higher education. People should not be graduating college with more debt than they can reasonably expect to earn in their first year of employment. A possible way to help on this front is to increase federal aid to students and/or create scholarships with strings attached for students who want to pursue a career that might not be as remunerative (or perhaps just gentler loan terms). Also, we should look seriously about how much we need the higher education we have today. I’m not saying all post high school education should go, just that credentialism has gotten a bit ridiculous. Jobs that often require a B.A. really require nothing more than six months of office training in many instances or perhaps a year or two of copy editing and computer skills training, but the low bar to get a decent job just keeps going up as the number of people with B.A.s goes up and the salaries aren’t keeping pace with the debt load kids are graduating with today. B.A.s are great if you’re going into academia or graduate-level work, sciences, etc. But do you really need a B.A. to write? To do any number of boring office jobs that currently require a B.A.? To be an accountant? Hell in Puerto Rio you may need a college degree to be a tour guide earning just above minimum wage. Really? I’m all for a liberal arts education, but when you’re 18 and trying to find a decent job, I’m not sure that spending 4 years racking up debt to get a degree in film is really a step in the right direction.

Next on the agenda is our aging and inefficient power grid. I’m not talking solely about our old power lines and transistors that are blowing out with fun blackouts in the Northeast, but our entire energy infrastructure. Investment in more localized power sources from smartgrid technology which allows small producers (i.e. rooftop solar panels or turbines) to feed power back into the grid would be a good start. Investment in renewable energy sources would also be a boon. Like it or not, most of the world will eventually move towards some form of carbon pricing and it’s better to be prepared while we’re busy tossing around all this money than be caught later.

Our communication network is lacking to say the least. Our broadband access is around #14 and anyone who has ever tried using their cell phone outside of a city, or sometimes even within a city (my mom’s in LA comes to mind) can attest to dropped calls and shoddy service. This is especially true while travelling. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had dropped calls while driving or riding the train. Both of these problems are indirectly related to our low-density settlement patterns because it’s harder to serve sparsely populated areas with just about anything than higher-density areas. That’s not really the point though. The point is that even in modestly dense suburbs there are service issues, gaps, and no service areas.

Whether you agree with the huge stimulus package or not, it’s coming. I’m just here to offer some ideas on how to make sure it gets spent in a way that benefits us for decades rather than short-term.

An article in today’s New York Times recounts Obama’s contradictory and confusing history with NSA operation legislation:

As a presidential candidate, he condemned the N.S.A. operation as illegal, and threatened to filibuster a bill that would grant the government expanded surveillance powers and provide immunity to phone companies that helped in the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants. But Mr. Obama switched positions and ultimately supported the measure in the Senate, angering liberal supporters who accused him of bowing to pressure from the right.

If Obama accepts Bush’s expansion of domestic surveillance powers, it will contradict the staunch beliefs of key allies like the ACLU and MoveOn.org.

But other legal and political analysts suggest that Mr. Obama, as president, may be more willing to accept the broadened presidential powers that he once condemned as a candidate, particularly since Congress has approved expanded surveillance powers for the government.

It will be interesting to see whether any shift occurs in both Republicans and Democrats regarding their views of NSA operations. If Obama accepts the broad presidential powers, Republicans may contradict their support for it and Democrats may contradict their disdain for it. If this happens, it will indicate that people did not have a principled opposition to invasion of privacy, rather Democrats had a problem with Bush having so much power and Republicans will have a problem with Obama having so much power. Either way, these are unprincipled positions. Laws are intended to be wielded by unnamed and anonymous actors, they should not be supported or written for one president or another. Why not? Because laws are intended to endure the course of many terms and many people holding the same office. I’m guessing that members of this blog will simply say that they place a greater trust in Obama when he is operating behind the curtain than they do in Bush. I support the domestic surveillance powers being used by both Presidents Bush and Obama.

Here’s a discussion from Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin on the pragmatic reasons why Obama supported the FISA Bill. His discussion includes a link to two of his relevant papers that are available for SSRN download.